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By Bill Scheffler
April 29, 2005
Greetings gardeners!
This is a special set of gardening
tips, consisting of a number of questions that I've
received, and my answers to them. If you have
questions you'd like to ask me, I invite you to
visit our discussion forum at http://pure-prairie-organics.com.
QUESTION:
You mention wood chips as possibly the best for
plants. I have always used wood chips and often the
free ones from the city of Wheaton. However, it
seems sometimes that the chips bring many weeds or
ants after I put them down. Is this from the chips,
or do you think they are not related?
BILL:
Ants are good. They are not able
to attack clean or healthy plants or roots. Ants are
on the decomposer side of the equation. Typically
they follow diseases and eat diseased or dead wood.
If they are in the wood chips, then they are helping
to decompose the wood chips and recycle the
nutrients for the tree. You will definitely notice
the feeder roots of the tree growing into the mulch,
going after the black humus leftover from the
decomposers. Ants are also world class aerators of
soil.
Ants are an indicator of dryness.
Ants in the compost pile mean it is too dry. It is
similar for lawns. Watering the lawn will definitely
discourage them. Ants are usually active for a short
time; two or three weeks. Then they move on.
Basically, I recommend waiting them out and letting
them move out on their own. We can gently rake out
the ant mounds so the lawn is not so bumpy. They
bring minerals up from deep in the soil and deposit
them on top for the plants. A sort of gentle
aeration / rototilling.
Of course, ants in the house are a
problem. We can use rubbing alcohol to kill ants and
use a mild bleach solution to erase their trail.
Ants communicate with chemical signals from their
antennae and if we erase their trail they become
disoriented and move away. Also, ants cannot cross a
chalk line. The calcium in the chalk absorbs their
signals and they get disoriented again. Your
children will have a field day "protecting" your
home with their wonderful chalk artwork!
Diatomaceous earth (DE) works very
well to control ants but can be hard to find. It is
a million year old algae whose 100% silica bodies
are angular and is like razor wire to insects. We
can clear an ant mound in 10 minutes with DE.
A few weeds may come in with the
mulch but they should be few and very easy to pull
out. Weed seeds need sunlight to germinate and mulch
screens the soil, preventing a lot of weeds from
coming up. Mulch will control more weeds than it may
bring in.
Ants are not the problem, they are
an indicator. They usually follow diseases. They are
part of the clean up crew. Of course this begs the
question; how can we make the plants healthy so they
don't get diseases?
The purpose of diseases is to
recycle the nutrients of malnourished plants. When
plants are well mineralized and healthy, it is
virtually impossible for diseases to do much damage.
Diseases are always an indicator of calcium, copper,
zinc and manganese deficiencies.
The grandfarmers used to put a
copper nail and a zinc nail in trees to help with
diseases (i.e. Dutch elm, apple scab, etc.). This
was before World War II.
Hope that information helps!
QUESTION:
I have grubs in my garden and I
cannot use lawn grub killer. What organic product
can I use now? I have not planted anything as yet.
BILL:
Yup, they are a bit early this
year...
The common recommendation is to do
nothing at this time of year (April) because they
eat for a short time (around two weeks), go back
down into the ground and then fly away as adults in
June. The adults are June bugs. The idea is that
they will fly away in June anyway so why treat? Of
course they will fly INTO your yard from the
neighbors, so maybe you should go and treat your
neighbors' yards!
Eggs are laid during the last half
of June, hatch at the end of July and go down into
the soil, and then emerge in mid-August and really
start to eat. Grubex applied in mid July has time to
work its way into the soil for the grubs to eat it.
It is not a poison but an appetite suppressant so it
won't kill every earthworm from here to Lake
Michigan.
Grubex doesn't work on the older
grubs, though. Poisons do. So do nematodes.
Nematodes are slower to control the grubs (around
two days) but are much safer. They are a little
sensitive to the environment, though. I had to water
before and after I applied them, and the soil I
applied them in was organically fertilized. Chemical
fertilizers are salty and can create a hostile
environment for them. They are a little pricey and
very perishable but the newer strains of nematodes
are stronger, hardier and easier to work with than
the older strains. Try Bio Control Network (http://biconet.com)
for a supplier of nematodes and other products that
might work for grubs. I have used rotenone, which is
fairly toxic as far as organics go, and the results
were mediocre; maybe 30% control after one
application.
This can also beg the question:
what are they eating? Conventional wisdom is that
they are eating the roots of the grass but that is
not really right. They are eating a FUNGUS that is
attacking the roots of the grass. Control the fungus
and we can control the grubs. The best way to
control bad fungi is by feeding good fungi and
bacteria. One of the best microbial stimulants is
alfalfa. Add some sugar to feed the microbes and the
results are impressive. Yogurt is good, too. So is
fish fertilizer mixed with seaweed. So is brewers
yeast. Use all of them mixed with sugar to feed the
microbes. This is one area where organic fertilizers
have a huge advantage over chemical fertilizers.
Grubs in the lawn are a problem
when they get to be more than five per square foot.
Less than that is a nuisance but the grass can
recover. It is common to find lots of grubs in the
mulch beds because fungi decompose wood chips. These
grubs are ok and are not worth treating because they
are not damaging anything. They won't go sideways
into the lawn. Especially if there is no food for
them!
I always thought an application of
garlic in mid June would do a lot to repel them away
from our yards. I have never done it, but I always
thought it would work. Garlic is a universal
repellent for all insects and animals. Put a clove
of garlic in a blender with some water, grind it up,
strain the pulp and run the juice through the
Miracle Gro sprayer to do the lawn and trees and
beds. Of course, if you get a craving for antipasto
salad then we'll know it's working!
Hope that helps!
QUESTION:
We are planning to core aerate and
top dress the lawn in the next few weeks. Our
compost is not yet ready. Do you have a good source
nearby where we can get clean compost?
BILL:
I definitely don't recommend any
compost, as no one is making a quality compost at
this time. Add some ground up wood chips, instead.
Pine fines is best, otherwise maybe a double or
triple ground mulch would work well too.
Compost is composed of two parts;
food and fiber.
The main ingredient our soil is
lacking is fiber (brown). Fiber gives soil its
crumb. We are not too bad in food values (in the
soil) but over time our soils have become fine
textured because the source of fiber has declined.
Roots need as much air as they do
food or water. Fiber (brown) gives soil its air
spaces. Also, the good microbes need air as well.
The main cause of plant problems
is compacted soil.
If you add fiber to the soil, our
crew can then correct any nutrient deficiencies or
imbalances that may occur. When adding fiber to
soil, it's important to check for nutrient
deficiencies -- however, the fiber is so valuable
that it's worth the effort.
QUESTION:
How do you "fix" perennial beds
that contain generous amounts of mushroom compost?
BILL:
Mix in peat moss, 50-50 with the mushroom compost,
as well as gypsum, to neutralize the salt. Maybe one
bag of gypsum every 100-200 square feet. (e.g. 10x10
or 10x 20).
I learned this from the Black
Forest company, because they have a mushroom compost
and that is how they handle it.
Happy Gardening!
Bill
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